Don't overlook the East Coast firms. CSC, SAIC, Unisys, Booz | Allen | Hamilton, Mitre, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon, and smaller companies are developing very sophisticated software, especially in data science (my field), and not just for the government.
A lot of these positions are highly competitive and involve a great deal of skill and education. Around here, they're still seen as major resume builders.
Anecdotally, I haven't had trouble securing interviews with West Coast firms even though my background is with a major East Coast company.
Maybe that's because I ran a funded startup for a few years, or maybe it's just the demand in my field, but "hipness" seems like a very bad metric for evaluating previous employers.
As for the interesting things they are executing at these firms, trust me, there are plenty of very innovative products, even in the commercial spaces such as healthcare. Machine learning, big data, practical cryptography, and basic research problems abound.
Look through some unclassified materials and talk to some people about their civilian work experiences and one can hear all about many fascinating technologies, all of which certainly trounce Pinterest in terms of interesting projects.
Rogue nuclear weapons location intelligence, international fugitive management tracking, and human trafficking are primarily targeted by highly sophisticated machine learning pipelines at sub-second analysis speeds.
Water basin management, flood gauge tracking, flood inundation maps, roadway construction modeling... Your average mid-senior developer from one these companies has expertise in a variety of fields: data analysis, civil engineering estimation (hydrology, hydrodynamics), physical simulation, DevOps, embedded software, and low-level machine architecture.
If the National Guard ever rescues you from a flood, you'll be grateful for their HEC-RAS's software, the government contractor who created the estimate flood plain in using GIS, and the civil engineer who verified the estimates at the local level.
The "hip"-ness of previous employers is a bad metric. Maybe the employee would need to adjust to the business culture of the West Coast, but in my experience people generally adapt to new working environments quite well.
Disqualifying someone over working at a major East Coast tech firm is a heuristic with a very high false negative rate.
Also, you'll find many people from those firms looking to make a fresh start, work for less to get started, and a lot of them are refugees looking to escape the bureaucracy of their current positions, which renders them extra-motivated as a new hire.
A lot of these positions are highly competitive and involve a great deal of skill and education. Around here, they're still seen as major resume builders.
Anecdotally, I haven't had trouble securing interviews with West Coast firms even though my background is with a major East Coast company.
Maybe that's because I ran a funded startup for a few years, or maybe it's just the demand in my field, but "hipness" seems like a very bad metric for evaluating previous employers.
As for the interesting things they are executing at these firms, trust me, there are plenty of very innovative products, even in the commercial spaces such as healthcare. Machine learning, big data, practical cryptography, and basic research problems abound.
Look through some unclassified materials and talk to some people about their civilian work experiences and one can hear all about many fascinating technologies, all of which certainly trounce Pinterest in terms of interesting projects.
Rogue nuclear weapons location intelligence, international fugitive management tracking, and human trafficking are primarily targeted by highly sophisticated machine learning pipelines at sub-second analysis speeds.
Water basin management, flood gauge tracking, flood inundation maps, roadway construction modeling... Your average mid-senior developer from one these companies has expertise in a variety of fields: data analysis, civil engineering estimation (hydrology, hydrodynamics), physical simulation, DevOps, embedded software, and low-level machine architecture.
If the National Guard ever rescues you from a flood, you'll be grateful for their HEC-RAS's software, the government contractor who created the estimate flood plain in using GIS, and the civil engineer who verified the estimates at the local level.
The "hip"-ness of previous employers is a bad metric. Maybe the employee would need to adjust to the business culture of the West Coast, but in my experience people generally adapt to new working environments quite well.
Disqualifying someone over working at a major East Coast tech firm is a heuristic with a very high false negative rate.
Also, you'll find many people from those firms looking to make a fresh start, work for less to get started, and a lot of them are refugees looking to escape the bureaucracy of their current positions, which renders them extra-motivated as a new hire.